The system slow-up was most likely caused by Avast, Comodo, and A-Squared. Mixing and matching third party programs increases exponentially probabilities of running into compatibility issues. You have to keep in mind the programs you’re using all have competing products. For example the developers of A-Squared were not thinking about whether their program will run harmoniously with Avast and vise versa. Developers don’t do a bunch of software tests running their program in combinations against competing programs. All they care about was whether their product will run in harmony with the operating system (i.e., XP, Vista, etc). I run the same security programs you do except for Comodo. What I do might be something you could try. Turning off some of the Avast providers and just run the standard shield and the web shield. Once a week I do an update and system scan with A-Square (incidentally I temporality pause Avast before doing an A-Square deep scan). Next get rid of Comodo. It’s a good program in all but unless you’re involved in some sort of high profile top secret stuff it’s overkill; besides even if you’re involved in some secret stuff I somehow don’t think you’d be mucking around with freeware. The Windows firewall is fine.
Now where to start looking for an answer regarding the restore issues - The Registry. Any fooling around with Windows Registry does involve some risk, and cleaning it out can have an impact on your PC's overall performance. It sounds like when you ran the registry cleaner some essential files Windows needed for a restore were deleted, or should I say, “cleaned”. Now can it be fixed? The answer to that is a big fat perhaps. First I would try using your Registry cleaner's restore feature which ensures that only the changes the program just made are reversed (keep in mind at this point restoring might not be possible if some DLL entry was deleted from the previous cleaning). Everything depends on the condition of your Registry.
For future reference whatever you do, never choose an autoclean option, they are not to be trusted. In most other programs that walk you through with wizards, it's no big deal if you don't pay attention and you merely keep clicking the Next button. That is not the case with Registry cleaners. I strongly encourage you to stay alert and read whatever the cleaning tool has to say. When you begin scanning, make sure not to have any applications running; if possible, it's also smart to unload any tools running in your system tray. That's because open apps are constantly making Registry changes, and you want the Registry cleaner to do its work with no interference.
The Windows Registry is the essential system that houses the massive collection of details about your computer; where programs are stored, which helper programs (known as DLLs) are shared among your various applications, listings of all your Start-menu shortcuts, pointers to the programs that fire up when you click on an icon, and that's just the beginning. Practically everything you do in Windows is recorded somewhere in the Registry. For instance, the URL for this forum probably has an entry now. The paths to the last dozen or so images or documents you opened are there, too, as are the details of the programs you most recently installed or uninstalled.
As a last resort, restore your PC with a backup program--which you certainly have, right?
I hope this has been of some help because I can certainly relate to the anxiety cause by PC issues and I’m not afraid to say, “Been There & Done That.”
(I almost forgot, when you’re through reading this, get your self a copy of Revo Uninstaller)
http://www.revouninstaller.com/
